Quote Originally Posted by Lacuna Caster View Post
My take is that these generally seem like lower-level logical extensions of the contingency spell (although being able to plug in arbitrary divination effects sounds perfectly fair), with Symbol of X just applying the contingency to an item or surface and/or adding permanency.
Contingency being a beneficial triggered effect is quite the outlier, with almost everything else being triggered traps or wards or explosions, but I can see where you're coming from. Perhaps instead of having a separate school for symbol-related contingent magic, you could just make that a modifier in your metamagic or crafting school, à la Earthbound Spell or Craft Contingent Spell, and leave the appearance to flavor.

Then you can apply triggered spell or whatever to a [Force] spell to get explosive runes, a stasis-related spell to get sepia snake sigil, hold person or the like to get ghoul glyph, any spell to get glyph of warding, and so forth, and it can be flavored as a rune/sigil/glyph if desired or something like a huge holy symbol, pulsing orb of light or similar if the caster so desires.

If merging that with a general item-enchantment/item-crafting school makes sense, I'd be quite happy to do that. Is there a particular 2e resource you'd recommend looking at?
Hmm, it's been a while, but I believe Volo's Guide to All Things Magical, Tome of Magic, and Player Option: Spells & Magic have all the relevant item enchantment rules. I can pull out my books and look around if not.

* Possibly flesh out rules for leadership, followers & mass battles.

* Conjuration needs fleshing out, and Enchantment needs tweaks for dialog/effect size.
I'd say these two go together, since if you're going to summon or compel a bunch of followers you might as well have them use similar systems, and if multiple PCs start doing that then you start reaching group sizes where mass combat rules are necessary.

My thinking at the moment is that I'll need to work out the bestiary system before I properly work out polymorph and other transmutation spells, and design it with an aim toward being more "magical genetic engineering" than something you can easily whip out in mid-battle. Necromancy might be similar.
Summon demon in 1e with its random demon generation tables in the DMG and astral construct in 3e with its build-your-own-minion menus would be good resources for something like this.