Yeah, balance was just a joke in palladium games, especially rifts. The techno-wizard or techno-psi is a cool concept, too bad magic was so wimpy in rifts. You can make them much better in gurps
Gurps can take a long time to make characters, but only if you really want to min-max your character into some super combat machine
I'm as guilty of that as the next guy, but I do find that if you have a solid character concept before you start, it cuts down on the point fiddling at the end.