I think they shouldn't use modifiers at all, ideally you would enter the mode with MODIFIER+modekey and then press the normal keys: q2c. I don't know if that's possible with your current program but that's what I meant.
It's a cool project but again I'm not sure what I would gain from the modes, counts and motions. Right now I use Awesome WM which is really similar to howm without changing modes, and without using the motions and counts (but I don't really find myself wanting to use counts to move windows).
