problem animating bullet lists

When animating a bullet list using first level paragraph I assume that each new list item (i.e. text line with a bullet in front of it) should be treated as a 'new paragraph' so to speak.  I should be able to synch that line independent from the other list items. 

This doesn't work so well when the line follows a list item made of multiple lines with carriage returns.

Example:

* list item one

      - sublist item 1

      - sublist item 2

* list item two

What happens is the list item following the sublist is treated as part of the sublist and appears with it when synched rather than aligning with the playhead at another time.

I have to use carriage returns (Ctrl-Enter) to break a line into multiple lines because Storyline does not support anything but round bullet symbols.  So if I need a sublist I have to break the line, add indent and type in a hyphen for the bullet.

I don't want to simply do a hard return to create a new paragraph at the line in question because it adds a large paragraph space in the list.  Storyline doesn't support user defined line and paragraph spacing which would remedy that situation.

Anyone have tips, tricks, workarounds for this?