Whenever any damage is dealt to a character, the player has two options:

Suffer the damage and move his or her hit point total on the tracking wheel down the appropriate number

Choose one card to lose from his or her hand or two cards to lose from his or her discard pile to negate the damage (any additional effects of the attack are still applied).

Note that before a character acts in a round, the two cards chosen at the beginning of the round are neither in the player’s hand or lost or discard pile, and so cannot be lost to negate damage.

If a players hit points go below zero and/or they cannot lose cards to negate the damage, they become exhausted.