how can i customize the view of items sublist in the sales order and assign that view to a particular role?

Don't think you can. I think you'd have to create a separate form for that role.

Yeah i agree with this, most likely need a form for each role you want to change the view of.

Not sure your use case, but I have a few custom fields that were created and added to our sales order form, but I restricted access to those fields to certain users as not all users of the form need to see them.

does that mean i can’t move the order of the line item fields in the items subtab/sublist

You can do that via the form customization screen

how can i achieve that?

Customization -> Froms -> Transaction forms

yeah, but i don’t see the section where i can re-order the line item fields of the item subtab

If you want that change to be different for each role, you need to create multiple forms and assign them to the various roles

Order of item sublist columns is under "Sublist Fields"

i see. i was just confused because i was expecting different orders for different sublist, it looks like it just one giant order for all the sublists

No there should be a tab for each sublist on the page.