Animate Dead.

[Yael]

Per the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/animateDead.htm), and both the Skeleton and Zombie's entries, the Animate Dead spell would only reanimate those corpses with 1 HD in the case of skeletons, and 2 HD in the case of zombies. But, what if, as a DM, I want my BBEG to revive those corpses to be used in a future confrontation.

Like animating the corpse of a fallen boss to be used as a minion or another boss with greather challenge?

I know that skeletons and zombies would be animated mindless and loyal, but if the wizard awoken them, they wouldn't be following its commands, right (I'm talking about a wizard, not a cleric)?

Is there a way? Or I misunderstood the rules?

[Coidzor]

If you want to reuse dead characters as minions, look at things like Death Knight(MM2?), Gravetouched Ghoul(Libris Mortis), Ghost, or Dread Warrior from Unapproachable East, I'd say. Maybe crib the Mummified creature template from Libris Mortis and apply it instead of Mummy. Maybe Bone or Corpse creatures from Book of Vile Darkness with appropriate tweaks to make them play nice with 3.5.

If you don't have access to those, there should be several options amongst the offerings available on the PFSRD if you're willing to tweak them to fit or just use 'em as-is. There's Skeletons (Skeletal Champions and maybe one or two others?) and Zombies (esp. Juju Zombies, IIRC) that both retain intelligence and some of the abilities of the person in life and IIRC they redid the Death Knight which is probably more readily usable than the MM2 version, even with the update that WOTC printed for it.

[Yael]

If you want to reuse dead characters as minions, look at things like Death Knight(MM2?), Gravetouched Ghoul(Libris Mortis), Ghost, or Dread Warrior from Unapproachable East, I'd say. Maybe crib the Mummified creature template from Libris Mortis and apply it instead of Mummy. Maybe Bone or Corpse creatures from Book of Vile Darkness with appropriate tweaks to make them play nice with 3.5.

If you don't have access to those, there should be several options amongst the offerings available on the PFSRD if you're willing to tweak them to fit or just use 'em as-is. There's Skeletons and Zombies that both retain intelligence and some of the abilities of the person in life and IIRC they redid the Death Knight which is probably more readily usable than the MM2 version, even with the update that WOTC printed for it.

Seems nice, will check out.

If something else pops out, I'll ask again :)