Is there a best way or any way at all to remove the "create new" dropdown on forms for a certain role? We have a role with little permissions and we don't want them to see this menu. These custom records are locked via the bundle that they were created in. Even though the role doesn't have the permission for these custom record, the role still has access to them.

You can use remove button action of workflow on the form with role based criteria. Those dropdown actions are essentially buttons. So in theory it should work :-)

Thank you for the idea!