I doubt that is standard practice on big chunks of text but I've seen it and done it regularly when designing a brand and the right weight for it just feels to be an in-between (e.g. between bold and semibold). You can go lower than .25pt. I've done .1pt without issues before.
If I were you, I would first look for a heavier weight. If that's not available, I think you can go ahead but I would advise you to be cautious and really look at the impact on your text. You don't want glyphs to start butting into each other so you might want to increase your tracking a bit as well as line height. Ultimately, you'll always be better off using a heavier weight as they were designed with aesthetics and legibility in mind.
There are also other ways to add emphasis if this is your objective for this text. A change in height, color, an underline or a highlight can sometimes have the same impact on text hierarchy as a weight change.
