  The unprecedented sky coverage and observing cadence of the All-Sky Automated
Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) has resulted in the discovery and continued
monitoring of a large sample of Galactic transients. The vast majority of these
are accretion-powered dwarf nova outbursts in cataclysmic variable systems, but
a small subset are thermonuclear-powered classical novae. Despite improved
monitoring of the Galaxy for novae from ASAS-SN and other surveys, the observed
Galactic nova rate is still lower than predictions. One way classical novae
could be missed is if they are confused with the much larger population of
dwarf novae. Here, we examine the properties of 1617 dwarf nova outbursts
detected by ASAS-SN and compare them to classical novae. We find that the mean
classical nova brightens by ~11 magnitudes during outburst, while the mean
dwarf nova brightens by only ~5 magnitudes, with the outburst amplitude
distributions overlapping by roughly 15%. For the first time, we show that the
amplitude of an outburst and the time it takes to decline by two magnitudes
from maximum are positively correlated for dwarf nova outbursts. For classical
novae, we find that these quantities are negatively correlated, but only
weakly, compared to the strong anti-correlation of these quantities found in
some previous work. We show that, even if located at large distances, only a
small number of putative dwarf novae could be mis-classified classical novae
suggesting that there is minimal confusion between these populations. Future
spectroscopic follow-up of these candidates can show whether any are indeed
classical novae.
