A Single Target Number

by Mike on 15 June 2026

The Index Card RPG has a neat idea we can try in many of our tabletop RPGs – using a single target number for an entire scene. Pirate Borg has the same idea.

Here's how it works.

Instead of worrying about different saving throws, ability checks, or armor classes for various components in a scene – we declare a single target number for the scene. You can, for example, pick a target number of 15 for a mid-range encounter in your 5e game or 20 for a higher-power higher-level game.

Whatever checks the characters have to make, they make against that target number. You declare this target number to your players, writing it really big on an index card or putting it as a note on your virtual tabletop so all your players can see it.

Doing so simplifies our games in a few ways:

It reduces the total number of back-and-forth transactions between players and GMs.
It reduces the mental overhead on players when they're rolling checks. They always know what numbers they need to roll.
It reduces your mental overhead when running the game – you don't need to look up every individual DC for any given check.

Of course, it comes at some costs:

It removes any concept of something being "easy" or "hard" (though ICRPG has a way around this issue which we'll get to).
It removes some of the resolution and granularity of crunchier RPGs like 5e.
For some players, it can seem arbitrary and abstract. Things mean less in the game when everything's just aiming for a target number. It isn't like you're hitting the dragon, you're just focusing on rolling dice and hitting the target number.

Not For You? That's Fine!

You have to decide if using a single target number resonates with you or not. For me, I always seem to be aiming to get back to Numenera and the Cypher System by Monte Cook Games. I loved it when, as a GM, all I needed was a single number between 1 and 10 to determine the difficulty of anything in the game from a small rat (level 1) to a giant world-ending planetoid (level 10). For me, as a GM, I have enough going on weaving the story together at the table. I don't need a lot of mechanical crunchiness.

So this trick might not be for you. That's cool. If it's something you're interested in, though, you might try it with your group. Like lots of good Lazy GM tricks, using a single target number isn't all or nothing. You don't have to switch your whole game over to this idea all at once and forever. Instead, try it for a single scene. Maybe a less consequential scene where the resolution of different target numbers doesn't matter too much.

Varying Difficulty

Maybe you want more variance in the difficulty. Sure, a single target number can work but some things are still easier or harder. ICRPG has a trick of adding or subtracting three from your difficulty for easy or harder things. That added variance can work. You can put all three target numbers up if you want and declare something being easy, normal, or hard.

We can steal one of the best ideas to have come from 5e here too – advantage and disadvantage. If something is easy, you have advantage on the check. If it's hard, you have disadvantage. Using advantage and disadvantage for easy or hard checks means less negotiated math and more dice rolling.

A single target number, even with these options for difficulty variance, won't work in situations where you have an armored death knight (AC 20) and a bunch of zombie hulks (AC 8), of course. For some games and some situations, it might be easier to just stick to several difficulty classes across a scene.

Another Simple Tool in the Toolbox

Declaring a single target number for a scene is another great trick to drop into your toolbox. Experiment with it. Talk to your players about it and see how they feel. Try it for an encounter or two and see how it actually plays out. If it works, drop it into your kit and use it to help you run awesome games for your friends.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Pre-Game Rituals and The Risen of Mot – Dragon Empire Prep Session 68.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Mix easy and hard combat encounters with non-combat roleplaying in dungeon exploration adventures.
Spend time considering what treasure and magic items the characters might acquire. Choose some randomly and tailor others for the characters.
Keep generic monster tokens on hand, physically or virtually, to improvise encounters as they occur in the fiction.
Work with your players to hash out rules you might not understand.
Keep a loose list of monsters for a location. Build encounters as they make sense during the game.
Spend extra time preparing big boss fights.
Establish and clarify clear procedures for overland travel, dungeon crawls, downtime, and other common RPG activities.

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