[KyLewin]

Finishing Taris without leveling up isn't really all that difficult (You're character won't die if an enemy breaths on him or her, though it can feel that way sometimes) so long as you use a bit more strategy than the rest of the game generally requires.

When your in the UnderCity and the Sewers, you can avoid getting killed by sending Mission ahead (while she's using stealth) and to get one or two enemies to chase her. Then she just has to run back towards the PC and Carth who can use their blasters to pick off the enemies before they catch her or switch targets (actually it will be Carth who kills them, the PC will usually just fire wildly at the ground, walls, and ceiling). Once you have Zaalbar, the PC takes Missions place as the bait because Zaalbar and Carth are much more effective at taking out your enemies.

With the Dueling ring, obviously you can't use that tactic as your all by you're lonesome against people who can generally kill you fairly easily (especially if you're a scoundrel like I was). You'll probably want to wait until you've at least gone through the Vulkar base for this quest, maybe even all the way through the swoop race, so you have some shields and some decent weapons. Dead-eye is a joke, so you don't need to worry about him, but against Two-fingers, you'll probably need to at least use a shield to block his blaster fire. Ice can be kind of tough, because she uses both ranged and melee attacks, but if you use shields to escape from her blaster fire and run away if she comes after you with a vibroblade, she shouldn't be too much trouble. Against Marl you will absolutely have to make like a coward and run away. Once you get a bit of space, turn around, fire ONCE, and then run again if you're really brave, you can put a mine down and run, but it's dangerous. It takes a while, but eventually he'll go down. With Twitch and Bendak, you need to save often during the fight. I don't remember exactly what I did with Twitch, but I imagine it had something to do with using a shield and throwing frag grendades at him. Against Bendak you need to run early (because he throws grenades) and then throw concussion grenades at him (save before you throw them so you make sure that each one knocks him out) and then throw frag grenades (my character could never hit the broad side of a barn, I'm not going to trust him to hit a stunned Mandalorian).

The only other real troubles would come from the Sith Governor, Brejik, and maybe Davik. Brejik won't be any trouble if you just leave him (and most of his cronies) to Bastila since she can't be killed or even hurt as near as I can tell (it was kind of funny to argue over who saved who later since she killed all of the bad guys while I ran away and hid). The Sith Governor will require you to rely very heavily on your two strongest party members (I tend to go with Zaalbar and Bastila), but again, you should be okay, just save before you fight him. With Davik you need to remember that you don't have to beat Calo, so focus everyone in on Davik and have the PC hang back since he or she will just be killed if he/she tries to do any upclose fighting.

Basically, if you save before and after every conflict (and sometimes after every successful attack you land), you should be okay. If you feel like that's too close to cheating for you, you'll probably not be able to make it through all of the sidequests and might want to just level up once or twice.