As much as people say never ever clip on the master, that's not entirely true. Clipping is a tool like anything else, there's a time to use it for a desired result, and if abused has some pretty serious consequences in terms of distortion and artifacts.
That said, clipping is an extremely routine process for me when mastering, whether it be with a plugin or clipping my converters going from my analog chain back into the digital domain. A limiter will (usually) push transients down in order to prevent distortion, and the result is loss of impact. Clipping on the other hand tends to retain a better perception of those original transients (I say perception, because they're not there anymore, but they've been cut off rather than pushed down) at the cost of distortion. Most of my masters will have small amounts of gain using both methods to get a balance.
Some tracks just don't have enough transient response to begin with and would sound completely flat with a limiter, so in those cases hard clipping can be better, if the instrumentation is capable of masking small amounts of distortion. You just need to be extra careful, because the tiniest bit too far and it's basically ruined.
