1. Under the POLYGONS / TOOL OPTIONS menu, make sure you
UNCHECK "Keep new faces Together".
2. Then, select all of the faces you want to extrude, and extrude them outwards.
3. For a spiky look, before you deselect, simply scale the verts at the end of your main spike, and all of the others should follow along.
ANOTHER WAY:
1. Make a spike as detailed as you like, press "Insert" to adjust and reposition the pivot to the bottom-center of the spike.
2. Do a search at Highend for a Melscript called: "scatterObject".
3. Install the script.
4. Select your spike, and shift-select a poly sphere, and run the script.
5. There will be options for randomly copying/instancing your spike on a poly sphere and/or a poly plane.
Good luck!!!
Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com