Can Animate Dead raise a powerful undead? e.g. an undead version of that creature?

[Greywander]

I assume it just raises the regular skeleton or zombie, regardless of what the corpse used to be. However, a zombie and skeleton template exists in the DMG, so in theory you could take the creature's existing stat block and apply a skeleton template to it.

I understand there are game balance reasons for not allowing this. That said, you still have to kill the thing first, so there's that. It just feels kind of lame to kill a powerful monster, only to get a generic skeleton or zombie when you raise them.

Also, aside from Create Undead and Finger of Death, I'm not really seeing many other options for raising undead. If you wanted to do something like raising an undead dragon, how would you do that? Again, I can understand the game balance reasons for not allowing it, but I know there has to be a way to do so, in-universe, and it's probably a spell, so what level would that spell be? Maybe CR-restricted uses of Animate Dead or Create Undead?

[Aprender]

Sadly, RAW is that animate dead only makes "regular" zombies and skeletons. Talk to your DM and see what y'all can work out as a homebrew.

[JackPhoenix]

It can't, and it can.

The corpse or bones must belong to small or medium humanoid, so that disqualifies most monsters. However, it does not tell you what stat block to use for the skeleton or zombie, only that "the DM has the creature's game statistics". Which means, in combination with the skeleton/zombie race from DMG, getting zombie knights or skeleton assassins is not against RAW. However, any spellcaster would be unable to use spells with V components (and given the mental ability maluses both "races" get, arcane casting wouldn't be a great choice anyway).