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Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell
That I'm looking at a system in which tactics and environment are a big deal is good to hear.
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I ran a very long-term martial arts game, and let me tell you, tactics really matter. It's a different sort of tactics than D&D. D&D is about using different strengths of different team members to sort of master a group-combat. GURPS tactics can do that, but in personal, one-on-one combat, it's just as much about finding a way to floor an opponent's defenses and setting up the ideal attack. Since a single hit is enough to eliminate an opponent, it feels much more like a fencing duel than a slug-fest.
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My major original concern was just making sure I didn't set up combat that was going to end up being a total party kill. I want my players to really invest themselves into the characters they make and don't want them to die too easily because I threw a fight at them that was too tough because I misunderstood the feel of the system.
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If you're not afraid of doing a little paperwork, walk yourself through a few sample fights.
Take some templates from a useful book (For low-tech melee, I recommend, in descending order of usefulness, Dungeon Fantasy templates, Martial Arts templates, Fantasy templates), build out a sample character, and chuck him up against some threats you've designed. Look at what the odds are, what sort of options and choices tend to pop out of your fights, and poke through some of the optional rules to tweak the results more towards what you like.
If you're really worried, I recommend allowing some of the Buying Success options: Give the players a few "bonus points" (We called them "White Stones" in a reference to the fact that I handed out white and black go stones during my martial arts campaign, with the white stones reflecting the ability PCs had to manipulate the narrative). They can use these to reduce any successful strike to a single point of damage (a "Flesh Wound") or to turn a failure into a success. In practice, I find this helps keep dramatic moments dramatic, and it emphasizes the difficulties they face without actually forcing them to fail.