What are the options to extrude fingers from a low poly hand? The technique I currently use to create faces to extrude fingers from a base mesh is: Cut the front and upper faces with the knife tool (as shown in the image).

Using the knife tool creates n-gons which influences the topology, creating more loopcuts would be continue over the arms to the whole body where they are not really needed (and would create more work to adjust them). 



Are there any alternative techniques?
You can use inset, but I have only tried this for three fingered hands:


Individual inset (II) with both faces selected:


Select the faces inside the new inset, move them forward a bit, inset again:


Select the faces inside that inset and move them forward, extrude middle section:




Extrude fingers: