The house can kill you before the haunt

Play with pre-haunt damage able to finish an explorer. If a trait would fall past the skull before the haunt begins, that character dies there and then, and the others may take their Items and Omens from the corpse exactly as they could after the haunt. That player flips their character board over and plays the explorer on the reverse, at its printed values, starting on the Entrance Hall — pre-haunt death lands in the exploration phase, and sitting a player out for the hour before the main act is a worse outcome than the rule is worth. Third edition's printed rule holds every trait at critical until the haunt starts, so the whole first half is otherwise consequence-free: you can walk into anything knowing the house cannot actually take you.