Undead minions for a level 20 dread necromancer

[Spuddles]

You are playing a one shot adventure, level 20. Your character is a straight classed dread necro with a million gold and a minor artifact.

What is your arifact? No decks of ruining the game.

What undead minions do you have under your control?

Remember, this is a one shot so 10,000 cr 1/2 skeleins won't do anything except piss the DM off.

[bobthe6th]

Vampiric terisque? lich DNs that control more lich DNs? sack of 50 animated rats(you have destructive retribution)?

What Cha score are we talking about? Splat book avaliabilaty? Also, why on earth would you make a 20th level character for a one shot? They are a pain to make from scratch.

[Feralventas]

Here's (http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14364205/) a link to a thread I participated in a while ago that got archived. Lots of undead ideas and concepts to work with. Given the site it came from it may include mildly rude people and comments, but considering you're already going to be working with mucking around with corpses, that shouldn't be too much further than what you'll be dealing with.

[Spuddles]

No input? No nominating sweet undead that would make totally bitching minions?

[Eurus]

At level 20, there are very few traditional zombies and skeletons that can actually contribute except as battlefield obstacles to meatshield you. Dragons are easily your best bet, but they're still kind of mediocre at that level. Create Greater Undead can get you specters/wraiths, but you need to use your Rebuke to control them.

[Gavinfoxx]

No input? No nominating sweet undead that would make totally bitching minions?

We'll give you input when you answer the questions and elaborate more!

[TheifofZ]

There are alot of high CR/HD undead about that would be amazing -if- they could be easily made/controlled.
Unfortunately, create Greater Undead is kinda lacking in the "overwhelmingly powerful undead making" aspect, and rebuke undead doesn't work on most of the undead that you'd want to control because of how it falls off.

But if we're talking about arbitrary DM-Said-I-Could-Have-Whatever-I-Wanted, then give us a few limits on things like CR and HD and we'll start tossing around a few ideas.

[Myrddin0001]

skeletons. most bang for the buck in terms of getting maximum hit die out of animate dead. at that level you'll have a rod of undead mastery, that plus buffing spells, and corpse crafting feat will give you a massive horde of swarm fighting meat shields.

[Spuddles]

High HP, high AC meatshields. Preferably few to none active abilities.

Assume that you can have 20 HD under your control via rebuke, and up to 40 HD from something you animated. The animated ones can come in a pair cause you just re-cast command undead on them every 3 weeks. So that would be two skeletons of something with a lot of HD and a 20 HD dread wraith or something.

I was thinking at first of riding a nightmare, but I am thinking the rebuked undead will be a death knight fighter (mm2 template) on a nightmare. Dread necro has planar binding iirc- what is a freakin sweet outsider for a lich to ride on? Nightmare is handy because astral projection.

[IndirectLemon]

Well I'd check out Undead Leadership and Shroud of the Unholy
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x

If you're allowed online material, the shroud allows you to create any kind of undead... so if you want to create a demilich find a skull, preferably of an arcanist of some sort with 21HD, throw some gems into it and wrap it with the shroud, voila Demilich.

Not the best example but you get the idea... alternatively check the book of vile darkness for bone creatures, they retain class levels and abilities... so undead wizards are an option.

[The Viscount]

Why only 40HD from animate dead? Are we limiting ourselves for the purpose of this thread? Also, are we assuming access to awaken undead for this exercise or not?

This is reminding me of the time I compiled a list of every monster that seemed to make a decent skeleton. 911 HD in all. Fun times.