There is not much, if anything at all in the .htaccess that would affect server stability. They apply only to the folder, and sub folders of that folder. So if you put a .htaccess in your document folder, it will have an effect on that folder, plus every subfolder, unless you create one within the subfolder and override it.
Even silly things like sending a 404 document to a document that doesn't exist could cause an infinite loop of 404 errors, but apache is not stupid, and will catch on the first iteration and output something like "in addition there was a 404 error trying to retrieve ErrorDocument".
robots.txt is a file that a robot should read, and obey.
.htaccess is something with directs apache what to do. If you block the bot, the bot will simply receive a forbidden code, not even being able to view your site.
Things like php and cgi can output any world readable file too, unless the server is otherwise setup.
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