Mutants and Masterminds and autofill

M&M

I've been trying to figure out how you'd do an autofill PDF character sheet for Mutants and Masterminds, and the closest I come is an old idea from DC Heroes, where you have a worksheet version to look at various numbers and then in the final version those go away.

At first blush, it seemed simple enough. Something like Fighting is figured at two points per rank, so if you're Fighting 4, that's 8 points. And defenses are one point per rank, so it's just the number of points you spend added to the value of the appropriate attribute. Long but do-able; I wouldn't fit it into the Calculate stage of the PDF because that happens every time you change a field, but you get what I mean.

Except of course adding to Toughness save isn't done directly; it's done either by advantages (like Defensive Roll) or powers (Protection primarily).

And I almost had that figured out when I remembered Enhanced Traits.

If it were just going to be used on the desktop, maybe stuff could be added with dialog boxes, but even PDF Expert doesn't render the dialog boxes for PDF on my phone. So I think the best thing to do is have a worksheet with space for all the various points, so you can see what adds to which value.
The aggregate free-form nature of powers is also a problem. I'm fixing it with terminology: The part I think of as a power is called an effect, like Affliction, Protection, Enhanced Trait, and so on. (In fact, I have Enhanced Trait broken down into several effects.) The conglomeration or aggregate is called a power (alternate effects all go in to make a single power). The sample archetypes have varying numbers of powers:

Archetype	Number of powers	Max effects in one
Battlesuit	1 (Battlesuit array) or 8 (counting “Battlesuit” as a power)	3 (Tactical Computer) or 8 (various Senses)
Construct	3	2
Crimefighter	5	6 (Utility belt)
Energy Controller	6	4 (Energy Control)
Gadgeteer	4
Martial Artist	0
Mimic	1	1
Mystic	3	6 (Spellcasting)
Paragon	4	3 (Invulnerability)
Powerhouse	4	3 (Super-Stamina)
Psychic	5	4 (Telepathy)
Shapeshifter	1	1 (Shapeshift)
Speedster	5	3 (Super-speed)
Warrior	2	4 (Aquatic) or 8 (different Senses)
Weapon Master	2	5 (Super-hearing senses)

I can't even imagine a page layout that allows either the possibility of 8 powers with 8 effects each or 1 or 2 powers and 28 advantages (the number that the Martial Artist has). The Basic Heroes Handbook compromises by leaving space for four powers and some effects...And I might have to compromise, too, saying, great, four powers max, five effects each.
Seems a shame not to be able to do the Crimefighter, though, but life is life. Maybe after I figure out how to do this, I'll be able to wedge it in there.
Anyway, the idea is that there is a separate worksheet...let's say there's a button that makes it visible; select the Create/Edit radio button and you can see it; select the Play button and it goes away with the new values displayed.