I could workshop it a bit more and make it so that the guy has the power to control bones specifically, so that there's more reason to make minions as opposed to just telekinetically throwing people 100 ft in the air.
It is if you're achieving practically the same result by using a completely different method. If I make a cryomancer whose power is actually to displace heat, is he suddenly not a guy with ice powers. Same thing here. No one really cares about raising the dead, the important thing is that you have a character whose power is to play with corpses and create an army out of them.
The mind is a disobedient thing, it might not agree to animate any minion without a core. Where the core is something helping the mind keep certain concepts in mind.