Coup De Grace

[cartejos]

What ways are there to expand what you can CDG in 3.5?

What ways are there to reduce the "casting time"?

Is there a build reliable enough to be able to perform a cdg without set up rounds?

[Corsair14]

Umm isn't a CDG when a target is incapacitated or otherwise completely immobile and defenseless and you simply take your combat action and kill them quickly? DMs actually make people roll for that?

[Faily]

Death Blow in Complete Adventurer makes it a Standard Action rather than a Full Action (requires Improved Initiative and BAB 2+).

[Saintheart]

Executioner profession out of BoVD does something interesting with it.

[cartejos]

Umm isn't a CDG when a target is incapacitated or otherwise completely immobile and defenseless and you simply take your combat action and kill them quickly? DMs actually make people roll for that?

Per the srd, helpless foes can be auto-hit with a full round action, it auto-crits, and forces a save or die.

[Darrin]

The Justiciar PrC (Complete Warrior) can hog-tie a pinned opponent, rendering them helpless. Combine with the Death Blow feat and some action-economy shenanigans, and you can grapple/pin/hogtie/death-blow all in the same round.

[Thurbane]

• Black Blood Cultist PrC (CoR p.44) allow you to CDG as a move action, with your bite.
• Gladiator PrC (S&F p.21) gets Improved Coup De Grace - CDG as a standard action.
• Spellwarp Sniper PrC (CS p.64) allows you to CDG with a ray.

• Bane of Infidels PrC (MotW p.46) can sacrifice creatures with a CDG to gain a bonus on CL.
• Harvester of Souls feat (EE p.) means anyone you CDG cannot be raised by any means less than miracle or wish while you are alive. You also get some temporary hit points.
• Lolth's Meat feat (Und p.26) gain morale bonuses for the rest of an enounter after a CDG.

The 1st level Heartache spell (BoVD p. 97) renders a target helpless for 1 round on a failed save. If you have allies waiting to administer a CDG, or if you cast it as a quickened spell and do it yourself, can be pretty devastating. You can also extend it in a 2nd level slot, allowing two rounds of helpless.

[Jowgen]

Also, Executioner Hood, MIC 6000 gp, lets you CDG as a standard action as long as you're CE, CN or NE.

[Vaern]

You might be able to get some interesting things through your DM with the Coup De Grace mechanic itself, no need for extra feats or equipment.
Any spell that requires an attack roll and deals damage is considered weaponlike, which may or may not allow them to qualify for a coup de grace. Complete Arcane says that weaponlike spells function as weapons in many ways including being usable with sneak attacks and being able to critically hit, though some might argue that they can't be used to coup de grace because it isn't specifically called out in the description. Others might argue that touch attacks with spells are considered to be armed attacks regardless of whether the spell is considered weaponlike, thus qualifying them for a coup de grace. The ruling is a bit of a tossup.
If your table rules that spells can be used to coup de grace, you gain a whole bunch of fun new options. For example, spells that deal ability damage can critically hit. You can use this to quickly drop one of an unconscious target's ability scores to 0 and disable them long-term without fully killing them, allowing you to, for example, wake them up later for interrogation.
Note that a coup de grace calls for a fortitude save against death, though. Even if you don't consider ability damage to be "real" damage, you have still used the coup de grace action and your target will still need to make a DC 10 saving throw or die (which can always be failed on a 1).