I'm a GM. We ended our last session with our barbarian at -19 health (can't avoid those crits sometimes). The town has a doctor that uses medicine, and a wizard the mostly specializes in magic items. The other group members are a witch and a rogue. I would like them to bring him back to life cause this is the first practical non stupid character this player has made. How can they bring him back though?
Have them found a scroll of reincarnate/raise dead, maybe something the wizard got in his stuff for a very long time and forgot about it until the death of the PC
What level are the players and the NPCs you mentioned? If the party is still fairly low level, your solution may need to include waiving some of the monetary expense for bringing back the character and removing the negative levels they receive.
To give a (very!) recent example from my home game: The party is 3rd level, and we just had our first PC death last session (also due to a nasty crit). They were helping out a settlement ruled by druids, so I fudged the leader's level by one to allow her to cast reincarnate for them. It's a poor village in the wilderness, so while the druid didn't charge them for spellcasting services, the party did have to travel a couple days back to their home base to sell off recent loot and buy the material components for her. Now that the PC is back, they need to find someone who can cast a couple greater restoration spells. (The player and I are currently negotiating a side-quest for that, to keep the revived PC's problems from hogging too much more of the spotlight when the full group next meets.)
Another solution which I've used in the past required the party to travel a week or so to another city large enough to support a temple with a cleric powerful enough to cast raise dead. We pretty much just hand-waved the downtime required for that, deducted the gold, and moved on with the main adventure. But depending on your campaign, you might want to make that journey into its own short adventure (but no more than one session at most, so that the dead PC doesn't fall too far behind the others). This gives you an opportunity to introduce some new NPCs and locations that they can return to later on in the campaign.
A Witch or Hexcrafter with the Life Giver Grand Hex can resurrect the dead without the need for the 10,000 gp material component. Maybe such a high level caster is passing through the town or has a Summer home nearby.
Since using this Hex costs no wealth, such a character might be willing to bring back the Barbarian at a lower price than a Cleric would. Perhaps a few thousand gold plus some service that the caster doesn't want to perform. It could be a nice hook for adventures.
(1) The Witch has a young nephew that needs an escort to his boarding school in another city. (The nephew is terrified of being teleported.) "There are rumors of bandits, but there's probably nothing to that," the Witch says. Once on the road, the party realizes that the nephew is a spoiled, impulsive, not too bright brat who causes them no end of trouble, and they understand why the Witch didn't want to come. And, of course, there are bandits.
(2) The elderly Hexcrafter needs a component for a spell, but this rare substance is only available in the local swamp. (The party can't help but notice that although his home and clothes are impeccably clean, the old man uses Prestidigitation to try to clean his belongings several times during their short conversation.) It turns out that the desired substance is highly prized by a number of denizens of the filthy swamp.
OK, first, I am going to assume that this is not PFS play. If it IS PFS play, the character was dead when the session was over, so it's over, period. Since it appears that you may lack experience outside of the PFS:
Stop thinking like a player.
You are the GM.
The barbarian isn't actually dead, his spirit is walking with the Totems.
He is not ready yet, so they send him back to become more worthy.
Do you think fudging a couple points of crit damage is a fail as a GM if it saves your story?
More importantly, what are your criteria for deciding this character is practical and non-stupid, while all of his previous characters are impractical and stupid. This may be something you should think about if you are interested in improving as a GM.
My group would probably bury the body after removing a lock of hair and saving it until they could afford to have the character receiving the Raise Dead or Resurrection spells.
I also insist the player of any character declare at the start of the campaign if they wish to be resurrected or left behind if they died. I ask them again every few levels, provided they've survived long enough, to see if they've changed their mind. The higher the level, the more likely to want to be resurrected as they've invested more time in developing the character.
A cleric with a scroll of raise dead would work, even if he isn't actually high enough level for the spell.
You'll need a restoration spell or two as well, to deal with the negative levels.
I find it's often useful to find a raise dead scroll or two in loot hauls. Last night, my players found one, and managed to use UMD to cast the spell.
Now that the PC is back, they need to find someone who can cast a couple greater restoration spells.
Restoration (4th) restores 1 perm neg level per casting, limited to one per week. Material components cost 1000 gp to cast in this form. Add 280 gp for the caster. Total 2560 gp over a week.
Greater Restoration (7th) restores all per neg levels. Material components cost 5000 gp to cast. Add 910 gp for the caster. Total 5910 gp.Of course, finding a 13th level caster is harder than finding a 7th level caster.
/cevah
My group would probably bury the body after removing a lock of hair and saving it until they could afford to have the character receiving the Raise Dead or Resurrection spells.
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This works for Resurrection, which can work with body parts (not sure if a lock of hair is enough, but I'll let that slide), but not for Raise Dead, which requires an intact body.
Since you're the GM, you have a lot more flexibility in this than a player would have.
-How does the player feel about things? Is he upset, frustrated, annoyed, or otherwise unhappy that all those crits caught up? This should probably be the biggest factor in things.
-How much attention should this cause in the campaign itself? Should it be an epic quest, or just some downtime and gold loss? And if a quest, what does the player do while it's on?
Hopefully, the group also considers its post-battle healing options a bit better. Our cleric's gotten some use out of Breath of Life lately (our barbarian ate three or four ogre hook crits one battle, and our sorcerer tried a fireball at 15' from himself to wipe out the enemy). This might be a wake-up call for them.