Should this work?

[Dimers]

There's a 1st-level cleric spell in Ghostwalk called painless death. It kills a willing living creature, no save, no SR. Unconscious creatures are considered willing for targeting. Soooooo ... you can touch any sleeping creature and kill it with a 1st-level spell? Anything I'm missing here?

At lower levels, all you need to pull it off is stealth and patience. Sleep or deeper slumber can set it up too, potentially from the cleric's domain slots (Dream or Sloth domain). At higher levels, it'd combo well with a brass dragon's breath weapon, dragon breath spell or hiss of sleep. The breath weapon and hiss of sleep definitely don't allow SR, and dragon breath probably doesn't either, depends how the DM rules it.

Or I guess you could just give your Power Attacking fighter friend a scythe with which to CDG. Maybe I'm overthinking this.

[Gruftzwerg]

sleeping != unconscious in 3.5

A sleeping character is helpless (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#helpless)and not considered unconscious (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#unconscious)(you are still able to wake up when things happen. it's just that your senses are dulled to some degree).

Unconscious requires you to be "knocked out" & to be "helpless". You could maybe argue if the target was forced to sleep that it counts as "knocked out", but not for normal sleep.

Either way, a sleeping target is in most cases already dead meat, so maybe you are overthinking this as you said ;)

[Dimers]

Learn something new every day. Thanks for the clarification. :smallsmile: