The Hantsche obstruction to embedding a 3-manifold $M$ in a homology 4-sphere is a $\mathbb Q/\mathbb Z$-valued bilinear form on the torsion subgroup of $H_1(M;\mathbb Z)$. If you were to use (co)homology with rational coefficients this would be invisible to you.

The Hantsche obstruction to embedding a 3-manifold $M$ in a homology 4-sphere is a $\mathbb Q/\mathbb Z$-valued bilinear form on the torsion subgroup of $H_1(M;\mathbb Z)$. If you were to use (co)homology with rational coefficients this would be invisible to you.

If you're less fussy about using the integers in your discussion of torsion, the Alexander polynomial is a torsion invariant of the homology of a covering space of knots and links. This time the ring is the ring of single-variable Laurent polynomials with integer coefficients.