Paul has covered all the various provisos, but I am not sure that PDF forms are a way forward. They can include calculations and dropdown lists (though you'd have to check with Adobe for the limitations - unless Paul knows) and they can employ JavaScript programming, but they make it more difficult to extract and collate the data from the forms. They are however transportable across platforms, provided security doesn't block the javascript.

I discovered when programming https://www.gmayor.com/ExtractDataFromForms.htm that content controls were up to six times faster to process to extract data than legacy form fields, (and Word 2010 faster than later versions, but that's another story) which can be significant with a large number of forms to process.

Incidentally you may find https://www.gmayor.com/insert_content_control_addin.htm useful as it contains a utility to convert legacy form fields to content controls and all the tools necessary to populate and edit your lists.

For anything that requires calculations in Word documents using content controls you are probably going to have to use macros, even if only to update fields. e.g. you can add fields to a rich text content control to calculate bookmarked values from other controls, but they will not update automatically. The ability to calculate without the aid of macros is the only advantage of legacy form fields, but they fall at the first hurdle with the list limitations.

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Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com