Best way to deal damage with a punch?

I have the animation and everything for the punch. Now comes detecting it. The first way I thought of, was to check for the hand touching something, do some checks, and if what the hand touched is an enemy, it would deal damage. I'd also have a bool value that can be used to know if the player is punching or not. The problem with that is, the player will have to be really close because of the way Roblox characters are. My second thought was to shoot an invisible and non-collidable block out of the players hand for a few studs and detect a hit that way, if this would be the best way, I'd need an explanation on how to do it. Other than that, does anyone know a system of detecting a punch? Thx in advance for any help