Joy has $30$ thin rods, one each of every integer length from $1$ cm through $30$ cm. She places the rods with lengths $3$ cm, $7$ cm, and $15$ cm on a table. She then wants to choose a fourth rod that she can put with these three to form a quadrilateral with positive area. How many of the remaining rods can she choose as the fourth rod?
$\textbf{(A)}\ 16\qquad\textbf{(B)}\ 17\qquad\textbf{(C)}\ 18\qquad\textbf{(D)}\ 19\qquad\textbf{(E)}\ 20$
The triangle inequality generalizes to all polygons, so $x < 3+7+15$ and $15<x+3+7$ yields $5<x<25$. Now, we know that there are $19$ numbers between $5$ and $25$ exclusive, but we must subtract $2$ to account for the 2 lengths already used that are between those numbers, which gives $19-2=\boxed{\textbf{(B)}\ 17}$