Personally, I think that the human characters in this genre are the most interesting and diverse crowd of all. You have your victims, but you also get lots of other interesting sorts; early Buffy (before it got all gonzo) is full of, basically, just vampires and humans that have to deal with vampires, all handling it in different ways.

do this

yes

Stats and basic moves do some particular things vs. your alternative implementation with, uh, let's call them "similar moves" customized for each character type.

- Repeatedly using stats ties related moves together. Sharp ties the "read" moves together; you know that if a given character is good at one, they're good at the other, unless they have a stat-replacement move.
- Stat-replacement moves are a shortcut way to re-color character actions; when a brainer uses Unnatural Lust Transfixion, you know she's seducing people with her creepy brain powers, and one supposes that the player's expected to portray accordingly.
- They allow the MC to come up with relevant custom moves for threats. In your system, I'm not sure how that would work really.

Given that, maybe poke around at some of the ideas in Knife & Candle, regarding modifying the basic moves based on what the characters are or are doing. I personally find it to be an interesting middle ground between 'custom moves for everyone' and 'all moves are the same'.

nod

I see what you're doing now, Tony.

It's interesting that there's no Cha-based saving throw. Is Charisma as devalued in ApocDD as it is in AD&D?

Elaborating on what Phil said above - since there is a way you can fuck up your own magic, and there's a way the target can weasel out of it, as compared to all the other moves where only one participant gets to apply their stats and talents to the situation, what does magic do so well that it's worth it to do magic to people?

The word you're looking for is paralysis. I'm not sure that recapitulating the language ignorance of our forebears is really...uh...forwarding your design.

I think River's pretty straightforwardly a threat.

It does raise the question of what did inspire the Battlebabe.  I don't really see any characters from the works in the Immediate Media Influences that map all that closely.

Somewhere I heard that Firefly is one of the inspirations and I think Jayne is a pretty obvious battlebabe. He isn't really super great at dealing with being in a fight, he just gets in them a lot 'cause he's kinda dumb and belligerent, and gets out when he's lucky or has help.