The best Undead to destroy Undead

Question

So, I've been thinking - it's pretty much common knowledge that Undead in general are Super Effective against the living, and Not Very Effective against other Undead - you generally want some Positive Energy based stuff to fight them.

Yet at least one type of Undead, Boneyard from Libris Mortis, is perfectly capable of reducing any bone-containing creature into a boneless corpse - even other Undead creatures.

This made me wonder, is it the only example of such Undead-Hunting Undead creature, or are there others like it? Can a Necromancer create a buddy who would protect him against, say, other Necromancers and their minions?

Answer 1

As you point out, most undead special abilities won't function against other undead. If you need an undead that can fight another undead, an obvious choice would be a vampire.

Vampires have damage reduction, fast healing, mist form, and that coffin escape power; adventurers might be able to deal with that, but many types of undead just won't be able to hurt the vampire effectively.

But, more importantly, vampires function like characters, including gaining class levels. Vampires can level as cleric and get rebuke undead attempts; they can level as wizard and get command undead or halt undead spells. Vampires also can enter combat using weapons, which might let them pierce some other undead's damage reduction.

This answer does not address the question of how to obtain one's first vampire -- the create undead line doesn't seem to do it. But, once one has a vampire, getting a better vampire is quite easy: just defeat a humanoid and order your existing vampire to make it into a spawn. In this way, a necromancer can make sure that they always have a vampire that is close to their own challenge rating.