Yup doing that all the time :P Thats how Sebcesoir builds his Zbrush basemeshes too. (i think he simply builds the lowpoly with smoothing groups and zbrush can recognize that and take care of the sharp subdivision outside of max)
Oh, another trick I used to save myself time in Max: Add reinforcement loops for your highpoly in a seperate Edit Poly modifier, so you can use the first Edit Poly to build the lowpoly from later on. I'm checking out this nurbs-stuff, and I'm actually considering using it to build my highpolies, it seems to be a real…