Does it allow you to do things like: take this font at 20px, outline it with a stroke of 2px, turn that stroke into a path, then use that path as a clipping mask, then render this image using that mask.
I take your question to basically mean "can it expand or shrink a path?" and "can it use a path as a clipping mask?"
Or did I misunderstand and you want to only show the image within the 2px sliver itself?