Battle through town, how to handle this?

[tribalxgecko]

My players have found themselves in the thick of battle when trying to save a village from a marauding horde of mutated gnolls and their creepy pets. They have decided to head for the bell tower (which is across town), as they have learned that whatever disease or mutation the gnolls have is susceptible to sonic attacks.

Any suggestions on how to handle this from a gaming perspective? I do not want to have the players actually fight all the way through the town to the otherside, as that becomes one really long drawn out battle. I do expect them to sneak and run, but it is a given that they will be failing checks. And just saying they are being chased by a horde of warty drooling dogmen (with no chance of being caught cause I don't want a total party kill or huge drawn out battle), is not much of a threat.

So what can I do to keep this exciting, tactical, and engaging for all of the players, while staying away from a never ending night of battles and running? I also don't want to gloss over it in a 5 minute description of running through town and a fight. This is actually a pretty big part of the current adventure so want it to be a main focus for the night. Any thoughts on how to make this a memorable scene, some different off the wall skill uses or rules that I can have them use?

Edit: Sorry, should have mentioned we are using Pathfinder rules system. All are 4th level (Barbarian, Sorcerer, Rogue, Ninja, Cleric 2/Wiz 2).

[Coidzor]

Don't make it one long drawn out battle, but have them face waves of enemies every X rounds or when they reach Y checkpoint of distance from the tower, say, 3-5 waves of enemies as they attract attention of groups of enemies that are freed up or got distracted by looting only to notice the PCs or who give up chasing a group of NPC children with nets in order to go after the PCs who are still armed and giving resistance.

Alternatively making it a sneaking mission works as well, with the occasional isolated encounter in closer quarters.

[lytokk]

I don't know what you can do about it, but I can see the Barbarian the sorc and the wiz/cler finding a defensible position in order to distract the horde while the rogue and ninja stealthily make their way to the tower. Barbarian group is the distraction, and the skillmonkeys are the plan.

What you can do is give them some sort of position that can be defended, a house with boarded up windows gives them someplace to make a stand with roof access if things get too bad, maybe another building a quick jump away. I don't know what your players want out of the game, but I think this would give everyone most of what they want.

[Coidzor]

Add in barricades (overturned wagons, carts, and mounded up furniture) to shape the terrain of the town further, which works both for sneaking and for taking up a defensible position as a distraction as well as providing better potential for pockets of NPCs to be distracting the gnolls as well.

Though, really, at 4th level, a village doesn't need to be attacked by an overwhelming, seething, thick-as-goblinoids/rats mass of gnolls in order for the gnolls to be a serious threat, so you may want to consider dialing back the number of gnolls some as well.

[Garagos]

Coidzor's suggestion is how the group I usually play with handles battles like that. There is chaos and battle going on all around us, but we aren't stopping to fight every creature we see. There are usually other allies (guards, adventurers, etc.) helping fight in the battle too handling their own share. We might fight a few waves of mooks as we move through the town and then a big bad for the final fight.

[Jenrock]

You could always make it an extended skill test. Let them use Acrobatics, Climb, Stealth, and maybe Swim and/or to navigate through the town. You could also let them use Perception to maneuver around a falling building or Knowledge (engineering) to put gnolls and company at a disadvantage or deduce the location of a tunnel. They can get into fights in a few ways.
They fail one of the aforementioned checks. They don't land quite right, or don't move fast enough and they have to deal with mutated gnolls.
I also like lytokk's idea of using characters in different ways. Your spellcasters probably aren't gifted in the skills listed above, so they might (maybe with a little help from the locals) draw focus away from their parkour-emulating allies.
Checkpoints. Maybe the main group goes around killing villagers while leaving stationary checkpoints to quell unexpected resistance and/or kill any stragglers.

[lytokk]

Bottlenecks are another useful tool in order to thin out numbers.

[tribalxgecko]

Thanks for the ideas! Much appreciated.