Tournaments hosted by the Dissidia Community involve a curated set of rules to ensure the integrity of competitive play.

The following rules are a template and can be deviated from at the tournament organiser's discretion. For example, in some 2022 tournaments, assist depletion was banned or group battle jobs were allowed.

Standard (2017)

In-game rules set to "Official"
Dave's Stupid Rule

A player cannot pick a stage they have won on during the set in question. Therefore, the losing player would be free to pick the same stage they lost on for the second game, having previously lost on such a stage. Should that player win that time, however, they can no longer pick the stage for future matches in the set.

Prohibitions

Feral Chaos BANNED
Rebellious Soul (Bonecrusher) BANNED
Omega Stages BANNED
The Rift & Phantom Train stages BANNED
Infinites BANNED (Beat Fang → landing lag → BF → landing lag → BF for example)
Jobs in Group Battle BANNED (Freelancer only)
Hacked Items BANNED
Breakable Items BANNED
Artifacts BANNED (Automatically addressed with setting to "Official")
All summons except counter summons (Barbariccia, Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo and Rubicante) are allowed, must be equipped
No 3rd party cheat codes (e.g. 60 FPS hack, exclusive equipment)
Using hex editing on PPSSPP to equip exclusive equipment, same character assists or illegal combinations of accessories is BANNED

Allowances

All abilities are allowed
1 Hit Chase ONLY

If a player continues chase after a chase BRV, it must be an empty chase, meaning the player does not perform any additional chase attacks.

CP glitch is allowed

Character / Stage pick procedure

This is in accordance with a double blind pick rule.

1) For the stage, a coin toss is performed. Winner of the coin flip will choose the first stage or begin stage striking if it's used.
2) For the characters, players communicate their character of choice to a single tournament organiser privately (direct messages)
3) The match-up is announced by a tournament organiser, players customise at will and play the match
4) Winner of the match may ban a legal stage if it's in the rules
5) Loser of the match picks one stage to play on from the remaining legal stages
6) Players communicate their character to the same tournament organiser again privately
7) The match-up is announced by a tournament organiser, players customise at will and play the match
8) Repeat steps 4-7 until one player has won a required amount of matches

Notes

The in-game ruleset "Official" disables calendar bonuses, artifacts, breakable accessories and a select few booster accessories. This inherently levels much of the playing field in customisation.

Blind pick for characters is a common procedure in tournament matches, as are stage picks and counter picks which are all announced and handled by tournament staff.

Character/Stage Picks are also usually at the event organizer's discretion.

Though Aerith assist has been banned in select few tournaments, it is not tournament standard.

The available list of stages can vary depending on tournament organiser(s). It's common to have a smaller selection of stages.

All Breakable Accessories are banned by the official ruleset. Sometimes Chocobo Items+Great Ribbon is allowed, but it's on a case by case basis.

The Equip-less multipliers and Level Gap are banned by the official ruleset in-game, the equip-less multipliers are usually allowed in any non-official format or casuals.

Modern Alternative

The Modern Alternative Ruleset is a ruleset that was originally proposed in 2020 by Eddiegames, and that's been updated and further implemented since.

It's built off of the 2017 ruleset, but with some key changes to help improve poorly functioning attacks (thinning the power gap between the top characters and the bottom ones by extent), and to improve build customization options slightly.

Played on the "Fan Official" in-game custom ruleset which implements the community's equipment restrictions and is otherwise standard.

Changes

Abilities

Recovery Attack is banned

Certain attacks are no longer punishable on hit. Also results in Chase > Nothing (aka Empty Chase) being safe instead of punishable by pokes, making EX Force absorb more reliable for the cast without needing Aerith. Also makes non wall-rush frame advantage more potent for offensive pressure.

Evasion Boost is banned (Ground/Aerial Evasion Boost and Precision Evasion are still legal)

Eliminates gapless invulnerable dodges for characters with command defensive attacks. Makes slow dodge punishing attacks *far* more reliable at their function.

Counterattack is banned (exclusive weapons granting slight Counterattack effect are still legal)

All "Disable" Abilities are banned

Counterattack + Disable Counterattack is a staple synergy due to it's consistency and overall strength. The strongest characters could afford to run Disable Sneak Attack instead, making them even stronger. This gives everyone more CP to play with and also bridges the power gap between characters slightly. Exclusive weapon minor Counterattack is a nice bonus on a couple characters too.

Accessories

The Equip-less multipliers are unbanned
The Level Gap multipliers are unbanned

Though they're often banned in tournaments or gentleman'd out of in casuals, they are legal here.

The EXP boosting "Chocobo" breakable accessories are allowed when paired with Great Ribbon (-30% breakable chance).

Gameplay

Chase Bravery used to be banned, but it isn't anymore.

The idea was eliminating raw 50/50s, since chase brv isnt really needed in any setups. But the punishment for a misinput was pretty awkward to implement, and with empty chase being safe, not doing a chase 50/50 was usually favorable for risk/reward, so it became less frequent and a ban became unnecessary.

Infinites are unrestricted

Most of them are very hard and also not insanely rewarding. "If you're good enough to hit them, you've earned it." is the main attitude of the playerbase right now.

All of the other restrictions of the classic 2017 ruleset still apply.