Okay then, how about the following scenario which we often see:

(1) (Say) Battlemage Jaes is guarding.
He is hoping to attack the monster leader if it comes close enough but otherwise will hit another monster.

(2) The overlord knows this, so moves all his other monsters first.

(3) Jaes patiently waits to see if the monster leader moves.

(4) The Overlord decides it is better not to move the monster leader, unless he guard action has already been activated.
As everything else has been moved, he says "That's it. Your turn."

(5) Jaes says "Well, in that case I'll use my guard action to attack that (say) skeleton over there"

(6) Overlord say "if you do that, then I'm not finished and will move my leader monster after you do that"

(7) Jaes says "Then I wouldn't have attacked the skeleton"

Everyone then throws up their arms in frustration. Someone gives in, in the interest of keeping the game moving.

GeminiWeb said:

Jaes needs to make a decision. Either kill the skeleton or don't. The Overlord ending his turn is being interrupted. Jaes either uses his guard order or will end up wasting it. If it is more valuable to keep the master monster from moving then Jaes should keep his guard order to prevent the OL from doing what he wants.

Keep in mind a guard order is lost if a hero takes wounds, so a smart OL will attack the guarding hero with those weaker monsters first to force him into a situation where he may lose his guard order completely without getting to use it. If jaes has chain mail on (for a total of 4 armor) and a silver skeleton is attacking him (pierce 2), all he needs is 3 wounds on the dice (not that hard with a blue/yellow/green) and that guard order is gone. Does Jaes want to risk it? I don't think you can interrupt a dice roll. You have to declare your interrupt before dice are rolled, or that attack goes off. If that attack does wounds, well...you aren't guarding any more. I'd generally rather kill a skeleton than kill nothing at all.

I've gone and reread all the stuff about Guard, FAQ examples, etc etc and have come to the following conclusion:

I am, in fact, clinically retarded in most of what I said.

My apologies.

Big Remy said:

I seriously just got weird looks from my workmates because I was laughing (at) with you on that one. Clinically retarded--fantastic!

Dlanaan said:

I disagree, but only due to a technicality. I believe the overlord is intended to be required to activate all monsters on his turn (otherwise he could prevent bypass the resolution of things like burn and bleed because the monster was never activated). If that's the case, then the overlord cannot declare his turn over until he has activated the leader, performed any movement/attacks he wants to (possibly none), and then ended its activation. Thus, at the time that the overlord declares his turn over (and Jaes interrupts), the leader monster has necessarily already been activated and cannot do anything further on the current turn.

If your group decides that the overlord is not required to activate all monsters during his turn, though, then I agree with Dlanaan. You can ask the overlord to back up and let you make your guard attack if he ends the turn before you got the chance, but if you do that, his turn isn't over. The overlord doesn't even have to decide whether he's doing anything else or just ending his turn until after you complete the guard attack.

Also, Feanor is correct that the overlord could attempt to force the issue earlier by attacking Jaes, and thus threatening to remove his guard order by inflicting wounds, and Jaes would have to choose to either use it immediately (before being attacked) or hope that the attack fails to penetrate his armor (and other defenses). Cards that cancel wounds (such as the Ghost Armor) may be helpful here, as they make it less likely that the guard order will be removed.

Antistone said:

That's an interesting standpoint.

From JitD (emphasis mine):

"The overlord player may activate each monster on the board once during his turn. To activate a monster, the overlord player simply declares which monster he is activating and consults the monster reference cards. When a monster is activated, it may move a number of spaces up to its speed and make one attack. Just like an advancing hero, a monster may make its attack before, after, or at any point during its movement. After the overlord player has had the chance to activate every monster on the board, his turn is over."

I don't really see anything in there that says the OL is required to activate all monsters, ony that he may activate, which indicates a choice. Even if he was required to, nothing says the monster actually has to move and do anything. But I do see what you mean about potentially bypassing Burn that way.

Big Remy said:

We had this discussion recently, when there was a master chaos beast sitting on top of a chest with 2 health left, 2 bleed tokens and 3 burn tokens. The OL wanted to "skip" the activation to avoid dying, slow us down, and force someone to get a curse token. The final ruling we had was this:

Burn/Bleed happen at the beginning of a figure's turn, not activation. Technically, you generally resolve these effects at the beginning of an activation, but monsters don't really have turns--overlord's do. That leaves you with a)all monsters burn/bleed at the beginning of the OL's turn, and I might contend these could all be resolved before activation or even spawning. or you could say b) (this is how we handled it) a monster can choose not to activate, however, it still has an opportunity to do so. Even if you choose to have that monster not activate, it still has its "turn" to activate, at which point it still bleeds/burns even if it chooses not to move and attack.

Thematically, it would be ridiculous to say that after being lit on fire and cut deeply, that someone/something would be unharmed by these cuts simply due to inaction. Maybe your body doesn't suffer any further damage if the burning stops (surges) and the bleeding stops miraculously (misses on the white die), but if you still have the tokens you are still on fire and bleeding. Refer back to my last paragraph for those who hate theme.

Looking back at the rules for effect tokens, most of them actually do say that they activate at the start of the turn, not upon activation (except Stun, which specifically takes effect upon activation for monsters). Of course, they say they activate at the start of the figure 's turn, and as Feanor noted, figures don't actually have turns. Even hero figures don't have turns, as far as I can tell--it's specifically hero players that get turns (JitD pages 7-8). So I guess you have to decide whether to interpret that as the start of the owner's turn (which is closest to the actual wording) or at the time of the figure's activation for monsters (which is more consistent with Stun).

If you decide that it happens at the time of activation, though, I don't see any need to distinguish between the "activation" and "chance to activate" (Feanor's option b). If you can't choose to activate the figure but resolve the effect tokens at some different time (either earlier or later), and if all of the bad stuff happens to you whether you choose to activate or not, then that's functionally the same as saying that the OL has to activate all monsters, so it's just an issue of terminology.

Regardless, I agree that there is no clear statement that the overlord has to activate all monsters; that's why I said I think that is the intent, rather than simply saying that's how it works. However, as it seems very unlikely that they intended to let burning/bleeding monsters survive through inaction, and given that the rules say the overlord's turn ends "[a]fter the overlord player has had the chance to activate every monster on the board," I think it's a reasonable guess at intent to say that the overlord's turn cannot end until he has either used or forfeited all opportunities for his monsters to move and attack.

I'd also understand if people disagreed with my assessment, though.