Yes, once you get the head in place and the drum tuned, initially, then you should be able to fine-tune it as you sit there. You don't have to take the entire drum set apart to tune the bass drum....but you should have to do it whenever you change heads so that you can get the collar of the head to "seat" against the bearing edge of the shell. Once that's done, then you can tweak it as needed.
How tight is too tight? There's no formula, really. It's just kind of common sense. Each drum size kind of has an optimal range of tuning. You get the size drums that meet your sound requirements and then tune them to their comfort zone -which is different depending on the type of shell, the type of drumhead and all that stuff.