Usually I'll do git rebase -i origin/master (or upstream/master, or wherever in branched off of on the first place). Doesn't require me to count up to N commits

Usually I'll do git rebase -i origin/master (or upstream/master, or wherever in branched off of on the first place). Doesn't require me to count up to N commits, and also does an actual rebase. But yeah, force push is kind of inherent to the process - you're rewriting history, no two ways about it. Usually for my own forks of projects, though, I'll go into .git/config and add a 'push' option with a + in front of the refspec - this enables force pushing always. This really only works and is safe for workflows where there's a distinction between your own personal GitHub account and the upstream that has the authoritative copy - you really don't want to rewrite history by accident on the latter.