Merzotna Potrova
It isn’t surprising that berserker is a Perverse Osmosis song, an entry in the Monster Manual, a subclass in later D&D, and probably a whole lot of other stuff. The berserker has a thing–going berserk. After that, who knows? Sometimes awesome, sometimes not. To quote my own band, “Friend or foe//No one knows.”
In looking at the Monster Manual, I noticed that they arrive in groups of 10-100. Take a moment and think about that. If you had a true by-the-book DM making this encounter, they would roll their two ten-sided dice, see the results, and you might find your merry band of a couple 3rd-level magic users, two 4th-level clerics, and a 5th-level fighter or thief about to get berserked by 65 berserkers. Although most of them have low hit points, any band of 60 or more has 10th-level fighter with two 7th -level underlings leading the charge. There also is a good chance that there will be a 7th-level berserker cleric with underlings.
I am not disparaging any man, beast, halfling, half-halfling, or anything, but hold person, four or five magic missiles, and splint mail+1 aren’t going to hold up against this berserker tribe. It doesn’t really say if you can surrender to berserkers, but they are of human intelligence [I mean, they do fall under “men” in the Manual] so I bet you could. They would take all your stuff except the splint armor since they scorn it.
Also, real life greetings to our friends in Merzotna Potrova. They are living in Kyiv right now, so it is obviously quite complicated living there. Here’s hoping that our Ukrainian brothers and sisters are alive and well and thrashing.