Can you damage a device using the wrong USB cable?

Having turned a regular USB cable into an OTG cable myself, the answer is no. The only difference is that the SENSE or ID pin, pin 4, is connected to the ground (GND, pin 5). This is purely used for the device to detect which type of cable is connected so it can behave according.

It's possible the device might misbehave if it doesn't detect the ID pin, but that is almost certainly going to be on the software side. And unless it's relying on pin 4 to be the ground instead of 5 — which is absolutely wrong no matter how you look at it — and the need for grounding actually arises, it's pretty much impossible for connecting a regular cable to result in any damage.

TL;DR: If the device follows any semblance of the USB standard then this cannot be an issue. Any Android device that supports USB OTG will support normal USB connections.

does this mean I cannot use a regular USB cable in a OTG (micro-B I believe) port

The USB-micro ports (A and B) always have 5 pins so there is no "regular" (4 pin) cable with a micro connector. Any micro usb cable can be used to power the device and no damage will occur.

This means every micro usb connector does physically support OTG. However this does not mean that the controller or the software will support it (You cannot assume that every micro usb device will support OTG).