Ah interesting. I mean it's not gonna be much help, but I would basically just create a color palette in some Adobe program and then match pantone swatches to it. As it sounds like you've seen, color theory can get really complicated.

A nice tool is Adobe color. It won't give you a set of 12 but it could make for some good starting points as they have a number or ways to use different colors and push and pull them together as a set.

Anyways, good luck!