Considering tampering with animate dead

[Sigreid]

So I've been thinking about tampering with animate dead to give it more of an old school feel and perhaps make it useful at higher levels without having to put together a small legion.

Basically, the idea is that instead of the casting animating a certain number of animated dead humanoids as zombies or skeletons it animates that number of hitdice of any creature. This would let you have, for example pulled out without looking in the books, a pair of ogre skeletons instead of 5 or 6 normal skeletons. Or a skeletal horse.

I don't see this as something that would cause problems. Am I missing anything?

[PeteNutButter]

You may be better off tampering with the create undead spell. It's higher level makes it a better candidate for this, I'd think.

Also, I find it odd that the current set up requires a horde of worthless skeletons and zombies, when 5e is supposed to be about speeding up play.

[Sigreid]

You may be better off tampering with the create undead spell. It's higher level makes it a better candidate for this, I'd think.

Also, I find it odd that the current set up requires a horde of worthless skeletons and zombies, when 5e is supposed to be about speeding up play.

I did think about that. My reasoning went along the lines of if a powerful necromancer wanted a hill giant skeleton, for example, he'd have to upcast his Animate dead. In my mind, Create undead is pretty much for creating the intelligent undead.