[3.5] Which undead to create?

[Raunchel]

Currently I am working on a higher-level Dread Necromancer focused on creating undead servants, and using them in battle. There however is one problem that I keep running into, which undead should I create? We will be playing at level 16, but when I look at the possible undead they all look rather weak, and I'm afraid that they won't really be capable in the combats that we will be facing, they tend to have rather low to-hit modifiers and their defenses also are far from impressive. So I want to ask the playground, what sort of undead should I be making?

And as a second question, does anyone know good ways to boost the amount that you can control?

[Fates]

You can make Bone Creatures and Corpse Creatures (BoVD) with Create Undead. They're basically like the skeleton and zombie templates respectively, but slightly better, and not mindless. This means they keep most of their original abilities, up to and including class levels.

Rod of Undead Mastery (Libris Mortis?) doubles the HD of undead you can control.

[Coidzor]

Animate Dread Warrior (Unapproachable East) + the Spell-stitched template (Complete Arcane, pg 161 I believe) on either yourself, an undead familiar, or some other undead minion you're keeping around permanently.

Awaken Undead + Dragon Skeletons/Zombies or any other suitably nasty base creature made into a skeleton (or fast zombie if you can get access to them, research a higher level version of animate dead that takes off the normal HD caps for skeletons and zombies, allows those alternate templates from Libris Mortis to actually be created) is always good too.

If you're stuck though, worst-comes-to-worst, there's always Bloodhulks, but you should be encountering or be able to argue to have encountered something decent. Failing that... a party member who can help you with survival/track/knowledge(nature/arcana/geography) to find certain creatures you want during downtime. Or "vegan necromancy" using flesh to stone on statues of what you want to make into undead to create corpses for your necromantic mojo.

You'll probably want a Slaymate, due to the metamagic aid it provides. Maybe a Necrosis Carnifex(Carnex?) that largely just stays in a bag of holding/portable hole unless you can get approval for creating advanced versions with more HD so they hold up better.

[OldTrees1]

And as a second question, does anyone know good ways to boost the amount that you can control?

Command Undead (spell) + Chain Spell (feat) ~= cl^2 pool of undead (or ~= 2 * cl^3 HD)

[shylocke]

If your DM let's you create undead that create undead do that. My DM won't allow because the ancient homeland in his world got overrun with that.