Good choices for low HD minions via undead templating & Rebuke Command

[Jowgen]

Howdy folks, long time no munchkin, missed ya'll

The Command Undead function of Rebuke Undead doesn't tend to get much play/attention outside of TO excersises (e.g. how big an undead can one command) or shadow/wight minionmancy spawn army shenanigans.

This is something different.

There's a plethora of ways to turn most creatures into undead by way of forcing them to acquire a template

The easiest being Wight, which does exist as a legal template applicable to "any corporeal creature except constructs, oozes, and undead" in Dragon 300, which per RC p. 49 does get applied to "any creature" who dies from negative levels even though the Wight's own spawn ability is Humanoid only.

Leaving aside general undead creation optimisation (e.g. desecrate, blood-stained template, corpsecraft feats), what interests me here is what sort of low HD creatures you can think of who have special abilities you might want to have in a minion for utility purposes or general fun.

For paramaters, let's assume we're talking about any corporeal non-undead creature (easy enough to find some applicable template) with at most 5 HD to account for a Lyre of the Restful Soul making them effctively 1 HD for Rebuke pool expense.

Bonus points if they have high Wis by default for potential Spellstitching.

[Maat Mons]

Sylph are pretty great. Naturally 3 HD with casting as a 7th level Sorcerer. If you can reduce that to 1 HD, so much the better.

If you can somehow manage to encounter a low HD creature with the Monster of Legend template, the template can (but does not always) give casting as a 5th level Cleric.

[Jowgen]

Sylph are pretty great. Naturally 3 HD with casting as a 7th level Sorcerer. If you can reduce that to 1 HD, so much the better.

These are neat. And as air-creatures, potentially even rebuke commandable without undeath, if one has domain access or the right Khyber Shard Holy Symbol (FoE p. 55), although in that case they'll take up the full 3 HD and you'd not want to reduce them as the Sorc casting keys of HD (at least in terms of CL).

[Silva Stormrage]

Bone/Corpse Creature are my general choices for this kind of reanimation. But here are some decent options, mostly they can be grabbed via lesser planar binding/spirit binding.

Lesser Planar Binding:
Maurezhi: Can eat corpses to gain in HD and strength. Not sure how that works if you have rebuked them and they gain HD. Probably just increases the HD they take up in your pool. Still even at 5HD they have animate dead, invisibility and hold person at will and decent combat stats.
Bar'Lgura: Can be used as a very nice taxi and if you have complete control over them who cares if they are a demon they can't screw you over.

Spirit Binding:
Pixie: Permanent Image SLA so free and it's pretty stealthy at 1 HD.
Nats: The couple of nat variants from OA have a wide range of super useful SLAs including divination, passwall, invisibility, ethereal jaunt, detect thoughts and others. They can range from 1-5HD.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Basically any humanoid or monstrous humanoid with necropolitan, and they even keep their class abilities and mental facilities, which is very important if you want spellcasting minions, and while it does lose you a level and some XP in lieu of LA or a CR increase (you basically pay off the template's LA by default), it's still very, very powerful, since you keep your class levels and ability to gain more. And you don't have to be Evil as a necropolitan, either.

You can lure people in with promises of immortality and actually deliver. And with a proper setup, your victims minions congregation will look alive and the same age they died as forever. They may even be healthier than they were in life due to a once-low Con score or from no longer suffering from any number of health problems from when they were alive. And since it's generally easier to heal undead than the living outside of Core, that is something that will be available thereafter.

If your group doesn't mind them, I'd suggest using both Leadership and Undead Leadership for those who will join you and help you willingly, while using rebuke undead and control undead (etc) for those who would cause you problems after you Fell Drain them into becoming skeletons (or whatever other template you use).

Having your most powerful undead be those willingly on your side, while only using your forcible control pools on those who would stop you, means you can get more done with less. So if you are of a slightly more heroic bent, or (if you have a decent Wisdom) want to stop those who would cause serious problems to your way of living by way of collateral damage, you can field your own armies.

And if you mostly just co-opt those who willingly join your immortal ranks and are only really "Evil" because undead are EEEEEvil (even when they're not), all the anti-undead factions can only go after you if they want to look like racist bigots, going after decent people who are just different than they are. This would be especially problematic for them if your congregation is big on helping out in their communities and improving life (and unlife) for everyone, defending civilization, driving off monsters, etc.

So when The Armies of The Burning Hate Pelor destroy all the defenders of a bunch of small and medium towns, only to see them overrun with monsters shortly thereafter (when said armies subsequently abandon those towns), you can throw massive protests at how Pelor's minions are going out and destroying small towns, both directly (half or more were killed immediately) and as a side-effect of their short-sightedness (they didn't have the forces needed to protect what remained in all the towns they conquered), you can really smack their PR across the face repeatedly.

And the elves are well-known as egocentric racists and for hating the undead, and I can't imagine most "Good" elven gods in most campaign settings not wanting to join in on the senseless slaughter of the living-impaired innocents. So they get hit with the same stick. That's on fire. Because of course it is.