'Activated' abilities

This sounds rather basic, but you know abilities such as barrelling attack, strength of the crowd, sunder armour etc... do they add an extra attack to what your glad would have done without the skill, or replace an existing atack with this 'ability' attack?

For example, if i have a 2 handed glad, would it be wise to train as many skills as possible so he attacks more? See what i mean? Or would this actually not be such a good idea, because actually he wouldn't attack more, and he attacks so infrequently he probably wouldn't even trigger all the skills in a fight?

Also, on a related note, how do i get create distance to trigger often whilst also getting things like hamstring and signature move to trigger? Ive noticed going parry-slash makes create distance trigger more, but the others less, and vice versa if i go straight slash.

Thank you

That's not extra-attacks. Each of your "normal" attacks has a % chance of being of one of the activated special attack types that you know, and the higher your level in a given activated attack skill the more chance you have to see it activated.

Additionnally, activated defensive skills like Create Distance have more chance to be activated when you have a defensive strategy, and offensive activated skills more chance to be activated when you have an offensive strategy... So you cannot favor the activation of both Create Distance and Hamstring at the same time, one being defensive and the other offensive...

CD won't go off when your strat is offensive and your AL is high, I've seen it on my pole-arm war.
If Bob Snarley is yours, then I've had a match with you before, both of us didn't activate CD much in that fight since we both had an offensive setting there.

Guess that's why I never see my defensive war use feint or my offensive rage use create distance.