I'm trying to make a subclass that has spellcasting abilities at levels 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 but when I put that they are available at those levels, regardless of what I do, they all show up at once. Even when the character is not yet at the indicated level. For example, I put down that they could choose from the sorcerer spell-list 2 5th level spells at level 9, but it's giving the option to choose 5th level spells at character level 1. I would add images but it won't let me.

Okay, two questions and I’ll be able to help you out.

• What class is your subclass for?
• Are you adding them to the Spells section of a subclass feature?

I am making the feature for the Rogue class. And yes I am putting them under the “spells” section of the builder, not the options.

Okay. What’s happening is that the character builder is presenting all of the spell selection dropdowns right away like you’ve observed. However, no matter what selections the player makes, those spells won’t really become available on the actual character sheet itself until whatever level you’ve designated for them. So they can certainly choose the spells right away at 1st level, but they won’t get the spells until they’re actually supposed to. If you had instead designated specific spells for the subclass to grant at each of those appointed levels, then you wouldn’t be having this issue at all. The spells would just show up on the character sheet at the right levels and it would all work exactly as you intend. What’s causing the behavior you’re observing is that you are giving them a choice. The way the system is designed it presents the dropdown for any choice a feature grants the player immediately when that feature is gained, even though the thing(s) they’re choosing is/are locked behind a higher level(s).

So, basically you have two ways you can proceed. You can either:

• Leave things as they are. The player can make their decision right away or wait since it won’t really matter anyway, and then they’ll get their chosen spells when they reach the right levels.
• You can delete the spells from the Spells section of the subclsss feature. Then, add a bunch of Options to the feature and attach the spell choices to those Options. That way they won’t present themselves to the players in the character builder until the right levels. But this’ll be more work for you to do, and it’ll be a bit of a pain to set it all up compared to the way you’ve already done it, and in the character builder it’ll be a little weird to the players’ perspective too. What’ll happen is that they’ll be presented with dropdowns to select Options, but they’ll only get the exact number of Options available as the number of choices they could make, and then once they make their non-choice selections it’ll present them with yet more dropdowns where they’ll actually be able to choose their spells.

Of the two, I would go with the first way and leave things as they are. But you can do it the other way if you really want to.

Oh ok that makes sense. Thank you!